You've probably seen Steve McQueen in a green Mustang, but have you seen Luke Skywalker in a gaudy Stingray?

Pointing a camera at a car and yelling “action” has been the substance of hundreds, if not thousands of Hollywood projects, with varying degrees of success. As fun as a chase through crowded city streets or across soaring mountain vistas can be, sometimes the decision to focus a film entirely on its automotive stars can take the spotlight away from crucial elements like plot, character development and dialogue.

In the best cases, car movies celebrate everything automobile with wit, talent, and skill. At their worst – or sometimes, even when they hover somewhere in the middle – they are forgotten, doomed to dwell at the bottom of the bargain bin or haunt the outer reaches of YouTube.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what’s left when you filter out the Furious, the Bandits, the Ronins, and the Thunder. Here are the car movies that everyone’s forgotten about, but are still worth a watch – if for nothing else than the cars.

The Wraith

When the spirit of a murdered Charlie Sheen comes back to his hometown in experimental supercar form and starts killing those responsible for his death in a series of street races, you know you’re in for a good time. Try not to think about the metaphysics of a car that is also a man that is also a ghost that also seems to have keys you can just give to someone at the end of the movie, and just enjoy the Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor and ponder what might have been if Chrysler had had the guts to actually build the four-cylinder marvel.

The Seven Ups

A Roy Scheider cop movie might seem like an odd beacon for auto fans, but to cinephiles of a certain age it’s acquired almost cult status due to its frenetic 10-minute chase scene through upper Manhattan. Scheider’s probably-dirty detective is behind the wheel of a Pontiac Ventura coupe, up against a full-size Pontiac sedan, leading up to a startling conclusion where the entire top of Scheider’s car – yet somehow, not his head – is sheered off at high speed by a parked 18-wheeler. You might also recognize the bad guy behind the wheel; it’s none other than Bill Hickman, legendary Hollywood stunt driver who was also the ‘wheelman’ in a film with possibly the best car chase of all time – Bullitt, with Steve McQueen.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

Proving that racing is expensive no matter what era you’re in, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry focuses on a pair of would-be NASCAR competitors who somehow steal $150,000 from a supermarket manager (wait, what?) before escaping with lead actor Peter Fonda’s main squeeze in a ’66 Impala. Shenanigans ensue, and there is much muscle car mayhem and not a lot of plot to get in the way over the course of a breezy hour and a half.

Banzai Runner

“Word of your 200-mph run made it all the way up to Washington.” With that simple sentence, it’s revealed to street racers that the feds are keeping tabs on anyone who dares to enter the midnight high-speed ‘Banzai Runner’ world at the center of this improbable, yet vastly entertaining B-movie. Loosely based on the actual ‘banzai runners’ of the early ’80s (who descended on early-morning L.A. freeways in turbocharged Porsches and repurposed Lola Can Am cars), it’s time to turn off your brain and embrace the lunacy of an everyday patrolman on a quest for revenge.

White Lightning

Everyone knows about Smokey and the Bandit, but few remember that prior to that comedic romp Burt Reynolds was tearing up back country Florida roads as Gator McKlusky in White Lightning. For a movie about moonshine, there sure are a lot of cars – including full-on dirt track racing scenes – and of course the movie devotes a substantial amount of screen time to Reynolds escaping the law driving enormous early-70s Detroit hardware. If you’ve ever wanted to see a ’71 Ford Custom 500 fly, well, this is your flick.

Corvette Summer

Mark Hamill had just finished Star Wars, but here he builds a horrendously customized Chevrolet Corvette Stingray in his high school shop class that no one with functioning eyes would steal – and then it gets stolen, kicking off the action in Corvette Summer. Did we mention that the Corvette has been converted to right-hand drive, for some reason? It’s a truly weird slice of late-’70s car culture, and the car is absolutely bizarre-looking, making this a must-watch for ‘so bad it’s good’ fans. Actual tagline: ‘A Fiberglass Romance.’

Catch Me If You Can

What would you do if your high school was going to close? Wager on high-stakes illegal street drags to build up enough funds to save the day, right? That’s exactly what happens in Catch Me If You Can, which exists in a world where muscle car racing is somehow less risky than just going to a casino and betting it all on black. Even weirder? The ‘Twin City Run’ that the hero takes on to win $200,000 from ‘the fat man,’ a ’20 miles in 20 minutes’ shoot through the city that ends up with a car between the uprights at the big football game.

Driven

Driven is the over-the-top look at the world of CART racing that star Sylvester Stallone settled for after he realized it would be too expensive to acquire the rights to Formula One. There’s honestly a lot to like about the movie, including some gut-wrenching crashes on the track and a genuinely likeable Sly as the not-quite washed up former racer brought in to help a young pilot find his feet. Other stuff, like the car chase through the streets of Toronto (dressed to look like Chicago), is a little much.

The California Kid

Just another ‘small town cop murders speeders with his Plymouth Fury’ story. No big deal – until Martin Sheen shows up to investigate his brother’s death. Sheen’s a hot rodder who lands directly on sheriff Vic Morrow’s radar, and by the end of the movie they line up side-by-side to settle things, once and for all, on the two-lane blacktop. A young Nick Nolte also co-stars.

The Junkman

The OTHER movie by the guy who brought you the original Gone In 60 Seconds. Director and stuntman H.B. Halicki stars as a thinly-veiled version of himself who’s being targeted for assassination because someone is … jealous of his movie career and his giant scrapyard? More than 150 vehicles were destroyed filming The Junkman, which was the last, and best, of the ‘let’s just smash everything up for a few hours’ school of car movies.

Have any other favourite yet obscure car chase films you’d like to share? Post yours in the comments below.